In King County, WA, we do ALL voting by mail. It's actually quite nice, as it is very conveninent and it also allows me to really research the candidates and ballot initiatives online before making my vote. I don't understand why every state doesn't do this. It is such a good method of democracy compared to having to go to the local polling place.

They mail you the ballots based on your voter registration information. If you have 20 people registered at one physical address, its going to send up a huge red flag and you can hammer those people with election fraud (and possibly mail fraud) charges.

Anyway, voter fraud is in reality something that happens at incredibly low rates. To me it seems much more damaging to democracy to make voting such a pain in the ass that no one participates in the process except for the hard core partisans. Making people show up at the polls on a Tuesday and stand in line to make their voices heard is incredibly disenfranchising to busy people that have a job and kids to deal with, and don't have a lot of extra time to spend during the week to go out and vote. I'd much rather have a more accessible voting system, rather than making it a draconian series of hoops to be jumped through in a effort to make sure there is absolutely no fraud.

Postal service usually does well by me, but they lost my 1996 absentee ballot, and I was unable to travel to vote in person. Talked to the city clerk later and they said a LOT of ballots were "lost" that year. They mailed them but many, many people never got them (sounded like around 100). I suspect that, given the area is largely Republican (obviously not Ann Arbor), some union postal employee decided to "lose" lots of ballots. Yeah, that's a federal crime, and most won't do it, but there's always someone. And there's no other likely explanation. One missing is "lost in the mail." 100, when the local post office is usually known for efficiency? Not so much.

Look, it's great that they are willing to send a ballot across an ocean to me, but every time I vote from abroad, I just fill out a piece of paper, drop it in the mail and hope that it arrives (on time) and is actually counted.

Forcing someone to come to the embassy to vote would not really be fair to anyone outside of the capital, but this could all be solved very easily with online voting. I can get a confirmation that my Amazon order has been placed, but I have no idea if my vote counts (I know... it doesn't)

Look, it's great that they are willing to send a ballot across an ocean to me, but every time I vote from abroad, I just fill out a piece of paper, drop it in the mail and hope that it arrives (on time) and is actually counted.

Forcing someone to come to the embassy to vote would not really be fair to anyone outside of the capital, but this could all be solved very easily with online voting. I can get a confirmation that my Amazon order has been placed, but I have no idea if my vote counts (I know... it doesn't)

IIRC, absentee ballots are only counted if the gap between candidates is less than the number of absentee ballots they have on hand, at least in some places. Same with the provisional ballots you get if you aren't properly registered or whatever.

USPS does alright. The best part is, when Joe Douchbagger in Nowhere, SD cheers when the USPS is brought down, he'll wake up next week and realize that UPS and FedEx ain't gonna deliver mail to Nowhere, SD without a substantial surcharge. A really substantial surcharge.

i tried to vote absentee in 2008. i mailed the ballot and the day before election day i got it returned. i don't know if the machine that reads the addresses is retarded or the person who designed the envelope was retarded....either was i refuse to vote absentee again.

Okay, look, let's be serious. How much work would be involved in the following plan. Commission a group of competent hardware nerds to make a reference design for a basic internet-connected document scanner, open source all the way through. Any company can release a product based on this design that meets basic UL standards. It just scans the paper you give it, encrypts the file with your private key and the recipient's public key, and uploads it to a particular service on the internet. The recipient may download it to their own computer to read, may print it at their own expense, etc.

The particular service charges a fee and requires authentication to upload, but does not charge a fee to download. This creates a filter against junk mail. The existing Internet is not compromised and you can still use email or any other communication medium you like just as of now.

Documents that have not been downloaded in a timely manner are then printed and delivered to your existing mailbox, for a fee, charged to you, the receiver, that reflects the fair and reasonable price of performing this single action.

Cajnik:Forcing someone to come to the embassy to vote would not really be fair to anyone outside of the capital, but this could all be solved very easily with online voting. I can get a confirmation that my Amazon order has been placed, but I have no idea if my vote counts (I know... it doesn't)